The more that I see the sexism and misogyny that's coming at me from every direction, the less I think my films have anything to do with sexploitation.

What I like about the '60s movies was that they were about women. They were telling women's stories. I think a lot of movies don't tell women's stories anymore.

I base everything on my own life experiences as a female. I start from there, and then I look for characters and settings that I think are cinematic, where I can use symbols and imagery to tell a story.

I feel like that's how women feel in a way. You can get paranoid because everyone actually is a conspiracy to diminish your power.

What I'm really trying to do is recreate classic Hollywood cinema and classic genre cinema from a woman's point of view. Because most cinema is really made for men, how can you create cinema that's for women without having it be relegated to a ghetto of "chick flick" or something like that?

Men in long-term relationships, we all know how they lose their mojo, they just completely fall apart. They feel like they're not even a man anymore, and they get kind of feminized and weird and they have this longing for this animal, brutal part of themselves to come back. Love does something to men.

Anything anybody's used, a comb, a lock of hair, a drop of sweat, anything that comes from somebody's body has incredible magical power.